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July 4th Question, Part III: Americans Revolt Billions of Times a Day

Alexis De Tocqueville once said that the limits placed on the central power in the new world are different from the limits placed on national power in the old world. In the New World, the national government has jurisdiction in certain specific areas. It is prohibited by law and custom from transgressing the boundaries of its jurisdiction. In that sense its power is severely limited. But within those boundaries it is sovereign and almost completely beyond challenge. If something such as war or taxing power is deemed a ‘federal matter,’ challenges to that power, for example the Whiskey Rebellion, were historically rare and suppressed mercilessly when they did occur.

On the other hand, Tocqueville says, the Old World functioned quite differently. The monarchs tended to be in constant conflict with other political powers regarding proper jurisdiction. The crown and the aristocracy and the colonies and provinces were engaged in an eternal game of tug of war, with each citing their own interpretation of law and custom to attempt to limit the jurisdiction of the others. Tocqueville observed that the limits to the powers of the central government in that case were largely imposed by the practical limits of enforcement. If a province was too well armed, then they went unmolested. If the aristocracy had the armies to resist, then they resisted. If colonies were too far away, or protected by seasonal factors then they had greater liberty. The monarch could only rule what he had the power to take and to keep, whereas America at the time that Democracy In America was being written tended to respect federal authority even where federales were few and far between.

It seems to be that as the United States federal government and the Presidency in particular have gradually morphed into something more like a European monarchy, our attitude towards its sovereignty has shifted. Certainly no state or province or faction of the ruling class would dare to challenge the military might of the United States in a single act of open revolt. But as time goes on we challenge it in small acts of secret revolt. Violation, for example, of our draconian system of immigration laws has become quite common. How many appointees to the federal bench or to the office of Attorney General must be caught in nannygate scandals involving child care payments to illegal aliens made under the table before we get the fact that our governing class, even that part which is directly pledged to enforce the law, routinely ignore this law?

We have a Treasury secretary who cheated on his taxes. But he is not the only one. There are probably more people who buy goods and services via the internet and catalogues who don’t pay sales taxes than people who do. We’ve been rehabbing our 132-year-old home for several years now, and I can tell you, some subcontractors expect to be paid in cash under the table. We follow speed limits when we think they are being enforced only. Dads let their teenaged kids drink beer. People cross the state line to buy fireworks, or any good when the sales tax is lower. People on unemployment compensation stretch it out so they can work on their eBay business.

Retirees buy discount drugs from Canada. Families share prescription antibiotics with other family members for whom they have not been prescribed. A man with cancer smokes marijuana even though he doesn’t live in a medical marijuana state. When we are driving at night and we come to a T in the road with a stop sign and there is no one else around, we slow down and roll through the stop sign. We eschew seatbelt laws when we take short safe jaunts up the block. We let our kids do a little practice driving in the parking lot before they get their learners permit.

We don’t recycle every time they tell us to. We top off the gas tank even though they tell us not to. If they announce they are going to illegalize normal light bulbs, we buy more, not less of them to stock up. If we think that gasoline will kill the poison ivy better than some biodegradable eco-approved watered down stuff, we use the gas. Even though certain states had anti-sodomy statutes on the books up until just a few years ago, gay people had sex in their homes all the time, and did not give a thought to the ordinances.

Businesses split in half so as to be qualified for small business exemptions from federal regulation. Farmers look the other way when they hire day laborers who clearly are not citizens. Federal regulators write their regulations, and financiers change their form of organization in unforeseen ways to avoid the regulations, even ones they pushed for.George Soros delists his hedge fund to avoid rules his beneficiaries wrote. Businesses treat many regulations as cost of business and just pay the fine rather than incur extreme costs. Factories and labs create commonsense workarounds to arbitrary OSHA regulations.

And most people have absolutely no moral compunction about any of these violations of the either the spirit or the letter of the law, because deep down they no longer believe that the law, especially the tax code, represents any compelling moral principle, nor do its dictates seem any longer to be fair. They don’t think their home state has earned taxes on the Amazon purchases or that it deserves any share of the mutually beneficial exchange between you and your dry wall guy.

I bet you can think of a few dozen more examples, and increasingly we’re all in business and in personal life thinking of more and more ways to game a system which we have less and less faith in.

It’s not civil disobedience that I’m talking about. It’s the opposite: Civil disobedience is meant to be noticed. It is a price paid in the hope of creating social change. What I’m talking about is not based on hope; in fact, it has given up much hope on social change. It thinks the government is a colossal amoeba twitching mindlessly in response to tiny pinpricks of pain from an endless army of micro-brained interest groups. The point is not to teach the amoeba nor to guide it, but simply to stay away from the lethal stupidity of its pseudopods.

The amoeba does not get smarter but it does get hungrier and bigger. On the other hand, we get smarter. More and more of our life takes place outside of the amoeba’s reach: in the privacy of our own homes, or in capital accounts in other nations, or in the fastest growing amoeba avoidance zone ever created, cyberspace. We revolt decision by decision, transaction by transaction, because we believe deep down that most of what government tells us to do is at bottom illegitimate.

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The people who founded this formerly-free country certainly thought that an armed revolution was a good way to deal with their dissatisfaction. Makes sense given that that “tax code” (code name for theft) is enforced at the point of a gun.

Of course, if one happened to be a parasite that was benefiting from this system, that person would obviously have a vested interest in keeping the charade going and continuing to have the state extract wealth from those who actually produce.

“The government that robs Peter to pay Paul will always have the support of Paul.” – George Bernard Shaw

“snooki” (probably no chick) isn’t angry, Snooki reeks of fear. Humanity has reached the edge of taking advantage of multiple others to profit one (if you can call big bank/capitalistic methodology “human”). It no longer works in a world overburdened by a population that is fed up, intelligent and ready to fight. BS rhetoric doesn’t work, and, yes, in droves we are challenging the system quietly. Laws only work when the populace is compliant and the populace is not when it isn’t a balanced and fair system. It is all but over. They have no response that can counter the truth.

I think that the author is saying that many people are dissatisfied and that will lead to an armed conflict. I personally think this can be avoided without bloodshed but some serious changes need to be made, not the baby steps governments are now making.

I think you did not read the article and therefore a troll or you are as smart as the real snooki. Your first comment stated that those that hire illegals are terrible thieves and this isn’t a noble revolt. The author made that very point too. This isn’t civil disobedience, which would be the noble motive. It is the opposite, and that we all do it. In fact, I think bullying is now a crime, not sure what level misdemeanor or felony but I would think stalking and/or trolling fit into that category. Therefore, are you a criminal or a moron? Orange jumper or Orange face?

I think that there were two items missing from our Constitution originally.

One should be transparency. All communication to or from a government sponsoring organization should be made public. National security matters can coded by levels set by Congress and kept from the public for the number of years set for that level by Congress not to exceed 20 years. The statute of limitations starts when the term for confidentiality expires. Anyone caught willfully destroying any communication will be held for treason and negligence will be punishable by a lesser crime.

Second, when we established term limits on the President, we needed the same for members of Congress. They don’t need to be there for their entire career. They just become the new aristocracy.

I obey the laws I choose to obey, when I choose to obey them. My choice is based on whether the law or regulation is in violation of common sense, and whether or not the lawmakers actually understood and read the bill they voted for. I’m not sure how long I and many others will be able to continue discreetly living this way.

Here’s the text of a sign hanging on the back of my car:

I WITHDRAW MY CONSENT Any perceived compliance with unconstitutional “laws” or orders put forth by government employees is NOT recognition of their authority; it is simply the result of carefully calculated submission to an entity exhibiting superior firepower.

A slight variation on the “I withdraw my consent” theme is President Barack Obama. Having sworn to uphold the Constitution, he refuses to enforce DOMA because he doesn’t like it. Apparently executive privilege is all he believes in anymore. . . .

Hello Mr. Bowyer; you are so very right. It’s good to hear someone tell the truth rather than be vassal to pretense. I immigrated from France to Exceptional America over 30 years ago, in order to run away from the very cancer infecting America now. The French have always cheated on their taxes because they’ve been taxed since the Romans 2000+ yrs ago… The more the gov clamps on us, the more we’ll resourcefully figure out how to escape tyranny; and consequently, the more gov will trump on our liberties. Hayek described the process in “The Road to Serfdom”, socialism always leads to tyranny because of the very reasons you describe.

How true. I know people in San Francisco that teach people how to avoid paying parking tickets, the parking behemoth long ago stopped being a useful municipal tool for clearing a street for street cleaning and now exist simply for collecting fines to exist. I know people in CA that routinely carry a concealed handgun, they have a license in Nevada, in AZ, in Oregon- but the Jim Crow era gun license law in CA is still there, only the well connected in SF or Marin can get a license to carry, and they are not vets or working people, they’re the people that can afford massive “contributions” to reelect the Sheriff. Speed limits on many many highways are only there for revenue, not for safety. I personally have to stock up on sudi-fed, I live very rural so I cant buy it when I need it but neither can I buy extra. The law says I have to wait a certain amount of time in between buying due to criminals manufacturing drugs. The criminals keep on manufacturing drugs but that doesn’t mean the law is repealed, even though it is a useless annoying law. Speaking of drugs, now the cops can kick in your door and rough you up/kill you if you resist – even when it turns out to be the wrong address – due to stupid drug laws. Drug testing, a garbage collector has to be drug tested but not the President? Not Congress? Why?